Monterey Motor Week — a feast for the insatiable car freak.

For the car nut, the auto aficionado, the gearhead, the motorhead, whatever you want to call those of us whose heads turn quickly at the unmistakable sound of a V12 Ferrari engine, or an unmuffled Ford V8 in a low-slung Ford GT40, the coming week of cardom on the Monterey Peninsula is nirvana. There are few events anywhere in the world that come close to the quality, the depth of field, the level of exotica and the sheer dollar or euro value of the cars that come to Monterey for this glorious week of rubbernecking and cautious tire-kicking. (Caveat emptor: if you haven’t already made a hotel reservation, be advised that most places in the Monterey area have been sold out for months, and the few rooms available, if you can find them, will be pricey, pricey.)

The Monterey Motor Week, for lack of a better term, is anchored by the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, held on the third Sunday in August (this year, it’s August 18) and featuring some 200 of the most desirable and collectible cars and motorcycles in the world. The concours unfolds on the 18th green of the Pebble Beach golf course and, truth be told, when I arrived there at 6 a.m. on Concours day a few years ago, it was freezing cold and foggy and the grass was sopping wet. No matter. We stood around and watched Duesenbergs, Rolls-Royces, Aston Martins and a whole plethora of other exotic machinery roll on to the field and take their places in their designated classes. Lest you think Pebble Beach is a place where you can just appear the night before and get, say, your pristine 2000 Corvette into the lineup, think again. It’s a pretty exclusive show and back in 2004, when I was a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, I had the luxury of spending a week interviewing concours veterans to see if I could discover the exact mystique of this esoteric niche of the car world. Here’s a link to that story. And there’s another one I did in 2006, on the same subject (you can never get enough of Pebble Beach and cars, I found.)

But the gig is not all Pebble. This plunge into the world of Monterey Motor Week starts tomorrow (Saturday, Aug. 10) with the “Pre-Historics,” a chance to have a look at some of the classic race cars that will compete the next weekend in the historic car races at nearby Laguna Seca Raceway. During the week, there are exhibits of automobilia at the Embassy Suites hotel in Seaside, and a display of about 150 cars in a mini concours held in downtown Carmel. The action heats up on Thursday, Aug. 15, with the Pebble Beach Tour d’Elegance, a 60-mile promenade around the Monterey Peninsula of some of Sunday’s concours entrants. Thursday is also the kickoff day of the big auctions, where tens of millions of dollars of classic and antique cars will be sold to bidders from all over the world. (Keep an eye out for Pebble Beach fixture and authentic car guy Jay Leno, usually dressed in jeans and a blue work shirt.) The auctions will be put on by, among others, Bonhams, Gooding, RM Auctions and Mecum.

Thursday through Saturday (Aug. 15-17), the Golden State theater in Monterey will hold an Automotive Film & Arts Festival, which will include a 45-minute preview of the upcoming “Patrick Dempsey: Racing LeMans,” a four-part mini-series about the actor/racing driver’s Porsche 911 GT3 RSR team, scheduled to debut on the Velocity Channel Aug. 28.

At Friday’s Concorso Italiano, you can check out more Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Alfas than you ever thought you’d see; and you can see a kind of a German version of the Concorso at the Legends of the Autobahn, a Teutonic herd of Benzes, BMWs and Audis. Friday, Saturday and Sunday should see you on at least one of those days at Laguna Seca for the historic car races.

Sunday, of course, is the Pebble Beach concours itself. The trick is to get there early and try to beat the crowds. Parking is almost impossible. And the admission price is $225 in advance, $275 at the door. Then again, where else are you going to see all these toys gathered in one place?